Lenovo First To Implement LPCAMM2 in Laptop

Lenovo's latest ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 laptop is set to be the first to use the new LPCAMM2 memory form factor, the successor to SODIMM sticks. From a report: While Lenovo has largely focused on the AI performance of its new laptop, which is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra CPU and Nvidia RTX 3000 Ada GPU, the company also noted that its device was the first in the world to use the LPCAMM2 memory standard. LPCAMM2 uses 64 percent less space than SODIMM and 61 percent less active power, according to Lenovo. This is thanks to it being based on LPDDR5X memory instead of regular DDR5.

Designed specifically for laptops, the LPCAMM2 standard actually has its origins in tech developed by Dell. Simply termed CAMM (Compression Attached Memory Module), it first debuted as a proprietary type of memory in Dell's Precision 7670 in 2022. However, in 2023 the PC giant donated its intellectual property to JEDEC, the organization that standardizes memory technologies. CAMM became LPCAMM2 (Low-Power Compression Attached Memory Module) in September 2023 when JEDEC finally confirmed its specifications. Samsung promptly announced plans to produce LPCAMM2 sticks, and claimed they would have 50 percent more performance and 70 percent more efficiency than their SODIMM-based predecessors. Plus, LPCAMM2 can offer dual-channel memory without requiring a second module.

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[jacks smirking reven]

Universe where RAM is one giant ram stick they keep adding 640K chips.

"Only 640k more is all we'll ever need.... Only 640k more...."

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[drinkypoo]

That's terrible, it means if you buy very much RAM in the frist place you're basically getting reamed.

Latency probably sucks

[DrMrLordX]

I'd love to see some latency testing done on the memory subsystem of these laptops. LPDDR tends to have significantly worse latency than generationally-equivalent DDR products, which can really hurt performance of multipurpose CPUs in many applications. dGPUs can get away with GDDR and phones/tablets can get away with LPDDR, but laptops are expected to approach stock desktop performance core-per-core in many circles. And yes this may mean worse performance running everyday tasks that boil down to a lot of

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[awwshit]

DDR5 latency is generally bad to start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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[DrMrLordX]

True, to a point. LPDDR5 is worse still, though good luck finding benchmarks.

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[TeknoHog]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency [wikipedia.org]

It's been my general impression that physical latency (as measured in ns) is roughly constant across all DDR generations. But it's interesting to note that the best latencies are seen around DDR3. The latest generations seem to want throughput at the expense of latency.

"Why people think "performace" means "throughput" is something I'll never understand. Throughput is _always_ secondary to latency, and really only becomes interesting when it becomes a latency number (ie "I need higher throughput in order

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[Ed Avis]

And then the elephant in the room is on-die memory, which Slashdotters hate because it's not upgradeable, but has allowed Apple to jump ahead of PC performance. It's surprising that PC manufacturers and Intel haven't come up with their own offering in the past four years.

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[spth]

Unless you are talking about cache, which virtually any PC processor has had for many decades, there is no "on-die memory" in Apple CPUs.

Apple uses LPDDR5 memory soldered onto the mainboard. Faster than socketed DDR5, but non-upgradeable

This very story is about LPCAMM2, a way to have LPDDR5 on modules, and thus get the benefits of LPDDR5 memory, but still being able to upgrade memory.

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[bn-7bc]

The RAM in macs are not on the motherboard, its built into the SoC, but you are right it's non user upgradable

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[Ed Avis]

Hmm, you're right, it's not "on-die". But it is part of the same chip package. Not on the motherboard. That's one of the main changes when they switched to the M series ARM processors away from Intel.

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[tlhIngan]

The other issue is you need LP memory or the power consumption is so high you're looking at a computer with a UPS more than a laptop.

There's a reason why desktop memory comes with heat spreaders nowadays, and often the faster ones have really big heatsinks on them, versus laptops which don't. The "low power" part of LP memory really saves a ton of power.

There were laptops that were trying to be cutting edge and used desktop memory, and the battery life was worse than pathetic. Non-LP memory just consumes a

More thise, more that..

[JamesTRexx]

..but when will we see an ECC option on consumer hardware?

I'm running BTRFS RAID1 for years now on my laptops, but I'd like to add ECC to the mix.
Sure, you can question how urgents is the need for either, but I have experienced bitrot on disk before.

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[williamyf]

..but when will we see an ECC option on consumer hardware?

I'm running BTRFS RAID1 for years now on my laptops, but I'd like to add ECC to the mix.
Sure, you can question how urgents is the need for either, but I have experienced bitrot on disk before.

There does exist a spec for DDR-5 ECC SO-DIMMs, good luck finding a laptop which implements it. There are a few, under the expensive workstation replacing eye-wateringly-expensive luggable category.

But, in the meantime, you can start buying your modules, here is one:
https://www.crucial.com/memory... [crucial.com]

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[test321]

AMD supported it for very long time, just dropped it few months ago. 1) See Asus motherboard support for Ryzen 2000 to 5000 https://www.asus.com/support/f... [asus.com] 2) Wikipedia lists the series "7000 embedded" with ECC support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] 3) AMD dropped ECC support for the 8000 series in the consumer range https://www.tomshardware.com/p... [tomshardware.com]

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[AmiMoJo]

Lenovo used to make some Xeon laptops with ECC I think. The main issue is that mobile CPUs usually don't support it. I think that's true even of Ryzen ones, despite the desktop models having it.

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[Dadoo]

but when will we see an ECC option on consumer hardware?

Agreed. I can't understand why people are even willing to buy non-ECC computers. And yes, unless you have absolutely no important data on your machine, you need ECC memory.

A few years ago, I had a non-ECC computer at work with bad memory. It mostly worked, but every so often I'd have an inexplicable error, or the system would crash. It took me two weeks to figure out what the problem was, and by that time, I had discovered a lot of my data was corrupte

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[tlhIngan]

It's made even more confusing because ECC is build into the RAM chip itself - DDR5 requires ECC internally in the device.

This has made it basically impossible to search for ECC RAM modules (modules that support ECC - i.e., the 9th chip) because everyone is saying "on chip ECC data protection". Kind of important if the server you're provisioning memory for requires ECC memory, so you have to search really closely to determine if they're talking about on-chip ECC (which is required by DDR5) or on-mondule ECC